Zhaoqing Phoenix as Napoleon. Photo: Splash News
Considering that Ridley Scott's new film about the life of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the most anticipated releases of the year, it seemed strange that so little was known about him. The only details we had were the initial casting announcement for Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon and Vanessa Kirby as his wife Josephine, and that it would focus on the rise to power and subsequent fall of the Emperor, as well as his all-consuming relationship with Josephine.
Pretty much all that was known about it was its November 24 release date and that, with the financial backing of Apple Studios, its 85-year-old director was given an apparently unlimited budget to bring the Napoleon saga to life, joining other massive epics. Scott such as «Gladiator», «Kingdom of Heaven» and «Exodus: Gods and Kings».
However, things have changed dramatically now. The first footage of the film was unveiled at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on April 24, a major merchandising event for movie theaters and exhibition companies. And judging by the footage Scott and Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman, who will be distributing Napoleon to theaters with what he calls a «robust theater window» before it comes to Apple's streaming service, presented at CinemaCon, it looks like Scott created a masterpiece of the late period.
The passage shown was a thunderous battle scene in which Napoleon lures the combined forces of the Russian and Austrian armies into a trap before devastating them on a frozen lake. As The Emperor of the Phoenix states, «Let them think they've got the height,» the scale and ferocity of the on-screen carnage led industry headline Deadline to state that «along with other well-known big battle pictures like Braveheart and 1917, Napoleon Stands Out,» and to another Variety film publication, to say, «This is real multi-thousand-dollar stuff that must be worth a lot of money.»
Rothman's confidence in partnering with Apple in what was rumored to be a significant undertaking was fully confirmed when he stated that Scott «can do things cinematically that few, if any, can do, filmmakers half his age» and that he «does it». on a scale not seen in years.»
This time it doesn't sound like a marketing hype: as Rothman commented to the exhibitors on the «old school, big screen» picture, «We trust you all will give this movie your best support.» He also noted that Scott never won an Oscar for best director, and the obvious implication is that, apart from the demographics of the Academy, if this movie doesn't succeed, it won't.
Back in the fight: a scene from Ridley Scott's film «Napoleon» starring Joaquin Phoenix. KEVIN BAKER
If «Napoleon» becomes the critical and commercial hit it is expected to be, it will overcome the curse of previous tales of the Emperor's adventures in cinema. Since the first triumphant film version of his early life, simply titled «Napoleon» and directed by Abel Gance in 1927, numerous attempts have been made to bring the Emperor's story to cinemas. They all either failed commercially or floundered in pre-production hell.
Most of his film appearances have been either in comic cameo roles such as Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and The Time Bandits, or in cameo roles in other stories such as War and Peace or in the drama of the Marquis de Sade «The Needles». It exists mainly in cinema as an iconic caricature that has firmly established the bicorne.
The only major film made about his life in the last half century was Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo, an epic Italian-Soviet co-production in which American actor Rod Steiger played Napoleon and Christopher Plummer played his nemesis, the Duke of Wellington. As the title suggests, the film focused almost exclusively on the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and cost a whopping £12 million (about £120 million today), making it one of the most expensive films ever made.
Costume test for a doomed movie from Taschen's Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Unacclaimed Movie : taschen.com
Not only did it draw scathing reviews upon release, criticizing its rambling and lack of human interest (Roger Ebert wrote, that «the protagonists turn out to be hardly more human than [the] extras»), but it was a huge box office failure, resulting in only £1 million.
The person most annoyed by the film's disastrous reception was the great Stanley Kubrick, who had just hit the big time with 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film was a significant financial success for MGM, and so Kubrick approached them with his plans to make a film about the life of Napoleon, which was to be the first major picture since the Hans film to star either Jack Nicholson or David Hemmings. lead. Unfortunately, while the previous head of MGM, Robert O'Brien, admired Kubrick's visionary work, his successor, Louis F. Polk Jr., was a more financially minded figure and began canceling any films that could not guarantee success.
According to Kubrick's biographer Filippo Ulivieri, author of The Unmade Kubrick, the director was frustrated by the changing of the guard. As he put it, «the lights went out in Hollywood.» Unfortunately, the project fell apart in late 1969 as the studio cited budget problems, although Kubrick had already cut back on the script to keep costs at what he considered manageable—after all, the director's idea of »affordable» was markedly different from Hollywood's. bean counter.
Snoozy: Rod Steiger as Napoleon in Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo (1970). Photo: Bettmann
Nevertheless, the director did not give up the idea of filming his cherished project. In 1971, he wrote a letter to the studio, shortly after they delivered A Clockwork Orange, in which he stated: «It is impossible to tell you what I am going to do, except to say that I expect to make the best film ever made.» «.
Ulivieri calls this «rather boastful intent» atypical arrogance and wonders if the letter was ever sent in this form. “Kubrick has always been very confident in his ability to make good films, but the phrase does sound uncharacteristically ostentatious. I think he was trying to push [them] with all his persuasion and influence. It almost seems like a desperate attempt, as if he already felt that his chances of winning [them] were slim.”
After A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick turned to the film adaptation of Thackeray's Barry Lyndon. It was partly installed during the Seven Years' War and consequently allowed him to use the considerable amount of research he had done for his Napoleon project, both in terms of military details and technical requirements. But after Lyndon's box office failure — as Deadline commented in a news article, «Let's just say [CinemaCon footage shown] will make Kubrick jealous» — the director moved away from lavish period pieces, though he briefly considered resurrecting Napoleon. in the early eighties as a twenty-episode television series starring Al Pacino.
Elusive: Albert Dieudonne as Napoleon in Abel Gance's Napoleon. Credit: APL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
Since Kubrick's death, there has been constant talk that Project Napoleon will somehow be revived. Steven Spielberg, who in 2001 brought to the screen another of Kubrick's great unproduced films, AI: Artificial Intelligence, began developing a mini-series based on Napoleon's original screenplay in 2013, with the original intention of directing it himself.
In February of this year, Spielberg told the Berlin Film Festival that “in collaboration with Christiane Kubrick and Ian Harlan, we are preparing a big project for HBO based on Stanley's original script for Napoleon. We're working on Napoleon as a seven-part limited series.» There was no mention of who would direct — No Time To Die's Cary Fukanaga was suggested at one time, but his name was missing from a recent ad — and, in any case, if Scott's film is successful, it might seem almost like a waste of time. unless their focus should be substantially different.
The Emperor himself might appreciate the great cosmic irony that, after a century in which it was virtually impossible to capture his life on film, two major projects are competing to offer a definitive description. However, in November we'll see in Scott's long-awaited epic whether «Napoleon's curse» has been lifted — or two centuries after his death, he remains as elusive as ever.
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